A computer-chip salesman walks into a bar. We’ll call him Paul. He’s a New Yorker in Tokyo for business, but now it’s time for pleasure, so he sidles up beside a pretty local girl and starts chatting her up. She drinks too much sake and he offers to take her to dinner and a drum concert. Later that night, he walks her back to her hotel room like a gentleman and starts to leave. But she tells him to stay, so he does. She strips him down to his boxers, which have pictures of “piggies” on them. But she has steamy sex with him, anyway, right there in the room’s built-in hot tub. After orgasm, she’s decapitated by a ninja. I guess that’s the punch line.

Whatever the case, it’s certainly the setup for The Hunted, arguably the American major studios’ final attempt at turning Highlander‘s Christopher Lambert into a bona fide action star. His Paul is unable to save his bedroom conquest (Joan Chen, TV’s Twin Peaks) from having her head separated from the torso, but he’s lucky to survive himself, after having his skin penetrated by a poison-tipped shuriken.

For witnessing the murder and living to tell the cops about it, Paul is targeted by Kinjo the killer ninja (John Lone, The Shadow), who belongs to a ninja cult. With the help of descendants of a samurai family (9 Souls‘ Yoshio Harada and Shogun‘s Yôko Shimada), Paul in turn sets his sights on Kinjo, thereby proving the adage true: The hunter indeed becomes The Hunted.

“You’ve seen too many samurai movies,” a detective tells Paul just prior to taking a ninja arrow through the larynx, and certainly J.F. Lawton has seen plenty of them, too. Clearly, the writer/director (Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death) enjoyed marrying the worlds of the Far East and the far-fetched Hollywood actioner; it shows most in two slick set pieces: a hospital siege and a swords-a-slingin’ scuffle aboard a moving bullet train. That doesn’t mean the whole is an exciting one, however; only in bits and pieces does The Hunted live up to Lawton’s own standards. That said, Lambert can claim it as one of his best. —Rod Lott

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In his directorial/screenwriting debut, hip-hop musician and multihyphenate RZA also portrays, natch, the man with the iron fists. Unfortunately, the man with iron fists is cursed with a tin ear, a wooden personality,and ham-handed camera skills. That last didn’t make much sense, but you get the gist: The Man with the Iron Fists is deeply disappointing.

It’s clear that RZA is a lover of Shaw Brothers martial-arts epics such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and The Five Deadly Venoms. The simple barebones of his story — various warriors and assassins with names such as X-Blade, Brass Body, Silver Lion and Poison Dagger descend upon a village looking for a cache of gold — seems tailor-made for the genre, and there are enough visual cues to remind us of the greats. Sadly, that’s all they are: reminders of better movies.

From a visual standpoint, RZA the director is all over the map, wanting the film to play homage while at the same time capturing the modern verve of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (another homage that does it much, much, MUCH better). Very talented martial artists are brought in for the fight scenes, but RZA always cuts away a few moments early from the money shot. You can see hints that something cool is going on, but only hints.

His skills with actors is no better; the usually dependable Lucy Liu provides a pallid reinterpretation of her Kill Bill character; Rick Yune Die Another Day) is a stiff; and RZA — casting himself as a blacksmith who supplies all sides with weaponry — is an emotional blank. There’s a lot going on plot-wise, but you’d be hard-pressed to care.

That leaves the one ace in the whole hole: Russell Crowe (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), as the British mercenary Jack Knife. His role is hardly better written, but Crowe, realizing the overt ridiculousness of the thing, unleashes his inner Oliver Reed and commandeers every scene with a boisterously over-the-top performance. He’s the only one having any fun, whether ripping the guts out of villains or pleasuring prostitutes underwater with the liberal use of anal beads. It’s telling that, in a supposed epic of nonstop kung-fu fighting, you keep waiting for the overweight Englishman with a knife to come back. —Corey Redekop

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After acquiring his ninja license in Japan, Cole (Franco Nero, the original Django) heads to Manila to visit his Army buddy, Frank (Alex Courtney, Looking for Mr. Goodbar), an impotent alcoholic with a sprawling plantation, a penchant for cockfights, a dentally challenged wife and a James Caan ’fro.

Frank and Mary Ann (Susan George, Straw Dogs) find themselves under pressure from ruthless businessman Venarius (Christopher George, Pieces) to sell their land, but they don’t want to, so Venarius enlists nefarious means, like a hook-handed henchman. Good thing Cole is there to use his newly minted ninja skills to rip that hook hand clean off the stump.

As Venarius tightens the screws, especially with the hiring of rival warrior Hasegawa (Shô Kosugi, who appeared as different characters in the sequels, 1983’s Revenge of the Ninja and 1984’s Ninja III: The Domination) to fight Cole, the movie gets more violent and ninja-tastic. Director Menahem Golan (half of Cannon Films’ mighty Golan-Globus duo) doesn’t skimp on the throwing stars, of course, but also busts out flash fires, blow-dart map pins and jacks-like face spikes. Meanwhile, Mary Ann wears no bra, not even when on horseback.

It’s hard to tell which is funnier: Venarius calling Cole not by name, but by “ninja,” or Venarius petulantly screaming à la Willy Wonka’s Veruca Salt, “I want my black ninja and I want him now!” Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What does is that Enter the Ninja is a blast — cheap and cheesy, right down to the ending’s freeze-frame of Nero winking at the camera, but never not deliriously entertaining. —Rod Lott

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Director Jackie Chan’s Project A 2 doesn’t live up to 1983’s pirate-laden original, mainly due to a period-piece setting that bogs down the story like a wet blanket.

Returning as super sailor Dragon Mao, Chan is recruited by the government to go undercover to expose a crooked inspector who stages his own arrests and murders the innocent. Meanwhile, Dragon’s being hunted by the pirates he defeated in the first film, although this is really just a weak throwaway link in order to justify the addition of a numeral to the title.

The first two-thirds of Project A 2 are heavy with dull dialogue, although it occasionally comes alive with an action scene, like when Chan and another man are handcuffed to one another and chased by half a dozen hatchet-wielding baddies. The final 20 minutes or so almost redeem the picture, with an extended set piece involving a giant hamster wheel, chili peppers and a toppling facade (a famous nod to Buster Keaton).

Ultimately, however, the sequel suffers from the same problem as Chan’s Miracles, a 1989 film set in the 1930s: too much period, not enough exclamation. —Rod Lott

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In his directorial debut, Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA distills what’s so enjoyable about 1970s kung-fu films into one spectacular, outlandish romp — a greatest-hits collection of Black Belt Theater fare. In turn, story is secondary to the all-out circus of slaughter, if not incidental altogether. Revenge is the name of The Man with the Iron Fists’ game.

RZA himself stars as the blacksmith of Jungle Village, whose governor has been killed for his gold by the wild-maned Silver Lion (Byron Mann, TV’s Arrow) and Bronze Lion (Cung Le, True Legend). The governor’s son, Zen Yi (Rick Yune, Die Another Day), returns to town to avenge his father’s death; rolling in about the same time is Jack Knife (Russell Crowe, Gladiator), a bloated bloke who practically sets up an alcohol-doused residence among the whores of the bordello run by Madam Blossom (Lucy Liu, Kill Bill).

That’s far more setup than the film needs. With all the chess pieces in place — and they number many more — RZA delights in having them knock each other down with feet and fists of fury, and specially crafted weapons that make the flying guillotine look like a Cracker Jack prize by comparison. He doesn’t skimp on their end result, either: the blood. Paying proper homage, it spurts in geysers.

With booby traps, mirror mazes and sound-effects stings, the whole affair could be considered tongue-in-cheek if said cheek weren’t already sliced open and said tongue already yanked out. This exercise in “hi-ya!” is anything but ho-hum. —Rod Lott

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